Page 1 of Spring Awakening

CHAPTER ONE

They say a watchedpot never boils, but Mali knows they’re wrong. It must boil. That’s the whole point. Physics or something. Yet she taps her pink stiletto nails against the kitchen worktop, waiting, and frowns at the abundance of steam pouring from the spout of her kettle. She takes a step back. The humidity isn’t fucking with her hair today. She didn’t spend so long styling her lavender wig just for it to look like she’s been dragged through a hedge backwards by eight thirty in the morning.

Her back hits the countertop, and a small smile plays at the corner of her mouth. Mali’s glad she went with the marble kitchen sides instead of the granite now, as she traces a vein through the material. It’s fake, of course—she’s not a millionaire. But she is a grifter, and nothing ever looks fake, so it doesn’t count. It’s just good math.Faux, as her mother would say. Today, her happiness from the counter does little to bring a full smile to her face. Mali only bought her house recently (it's got a green front door and two wooden beams, so she thinks it counts as cottage), so the novelty of having her own place hasn’t wornoff. She’s already over the need to renovate though. The landlord specials keep creeping into her dreams. She can’t possibly strip another door. What did boomers have against wooden doors anyway?

Regrettably, the kettle was already hers. She brought it with her, and right now, she’s thinking about replacing it for a younger, newer model, because it’s taking the piss. It’s nauseatingly slow. She’s not sure it’s ever been this slow before. Actually, Mali is sure that when she has time, she can whip up a cup of tea in a couple minutes. (Sometimes, she has to put the milk in before she takes the teabag out, which makes her gag a little, but desperate times and all.) Today, she’s rushing, so the kettle is taunting her.

Mali doesn’t do being late. It’s rude and unnecessary. Sometimes. She has leeway for people with children, people with a disability, and people that have to parallel park. So, the fact that she’s about to be running late when she faces none of those challenges is the worst thing that could happen to her.

It’s her first day at her new job with the local rugby club (a job she desperately wants to keep, as the commute from her house is a neat fifteen-minute walk along the river). So, she needs to be on time. She needs her kettle to sort its life out.

Mali’s mother says it’s her first grown-up job, but that’s not true. Mali has been working since she was sixteen. It doesn’t matter what people say; having to deal with pompous customers and maintain a smile when they’resosure that the item they have in their hand is the one on sale (and not the one under the sale sign) made her a grown-up.

It is, however, the first job her parents semi-approve of. Her father would usually let Mali get away with murder, but he will give his wife whatever she wants, and what his wife wanted was a doctor and a handful of grandchildren. Instead, she got a people-pleasing daughter with colourful hair and one semi-successful(over now, but it counts) relationship. (Mali also counts her time with Trish as a relationship, but her parents refuse to talk about her because she left Mali stranded at an airport in Italy. Cow.) The new job helps soften the blow of being twenty-six and just starting out. It would be better for her parents if she were a doctor, but that hope disappeared when she was eight years old and they discovered she passes out at the sight of blood. (It’s a miracle she makes it through a rugby game alive, honestly.)

Deep down, there’s a part of Mali that knows her parents only let her get away with being a public relations officer because they think of the Toulshire Titans as family… if their family were a group of people her actual family had never met nor spoken to. They’ve had season tickets for the past sixteen years—every year they’ve lived here—and her father thinks that counts. Mali also knows her parents would never have forced her into a job she didn’t want to do.

The fact her parents wouldn’t have been able to afford the hike in season ticket prices this year now that the Titans have been promoted to the regional leagues is also not lost on her. The Titans aren’t on mainstream television every Sunday or anything, but they are known now. They have a few local billboards, and whispers of sponsorships. Everyone (including Mali) thinks they could get promoted to the premiership next year, and everyone (including Mali) wants to be there before they are.

Still, as she frowns at the bubbling kettle, she wishes the team would remember that peoplehavebeen there. They were there when the Titans were first promoted to any league. They were there when Ezra Adebayo retired from professional rugby and joined the team. (She wonders if he’s fuming that he left the big leagues only to possibly be back there moments later.) They were there when Frankie Adebayo became the first female coach. They’ve been there, and Mali thinks it’s rude not to havesome kind of contingency plan in place for people who have supported the team for decades, only to be priced out now that other people care the Titans exist.

What, travelling around the country on community-driven coaches at five a.m. and sitting in the pissing rain just to watch them lose to borderline children means nothing now they’re popular? It’s probably not the players’ choice, but Mali hopes to suggest a fund for the people who can no longer support them in the way they always have. Maybe once she’s taken over their sponsorships and got them some real money, they’ll be able to hear her out. It’s not like she’s planning on telling them that on her first day. Unless they ask, in which case, she has a finance plan, obviously.

That’s not the only thing she’s got scrawled on the back of her latest water bill. Mali has always been adept at making something out of nothing, even if it takes creative ways to do it. She has so many ideas floating in her head. (She really should use one of the three notepads she bought for this job, but they’re all so pretty that she’s not sure which one to deface first.) She knows the ideas will work if they give her the chance they promised her in the interview.

None of that has anything to do with being late on day one.

As if he could sense her blooming annoyance, Buffy—the cat she found at the side of the road three years ago and is now the love of her life—jumps onto the side and bumps against her arm. Mali gives him a stroke under the chin before she moves to place him on the floor. She’s trying to keep him off the worktops (mainly because his black fur shows up everywhere, but also hygiene, etcetera) but Buffy doesn’t care what she wants. He saunters across the kitchen and jumps up onto the other side, seeking the sunlight that peeks out from behind the large trees in the back garden.

Mali wonders whether she can be bothered to get him down again when he’s going to look at her with mild disdain and hop straight back up, but then the kettle clicks. Huh. Maybe a watched pot is a stubborn little so-and-so. Still, her hand is heavy against the handle, poised and ready for action. Mali makes a cup of tea with the same dedication some might project-plan a multi-year housing project. Sugar and teabag (Twinings, because she has some dignity) in the prettiest mug that’s clean, water, brew for two minutes and forty-five seconds, then add a healthy helping of milk. Today, she only has about fifteen seconds to leave the teabag before putting the milk in, and she needs to use a flask. Ugh.

There are very few reasons Mali would ever leave the house without her morning tea. Even if it’s made slightly subpar, it’s still a warm cuppa. It’s basically a rite of passage. It’s in her blood. Mali thinks that the moment someone is born on British soil, half their blood is made up of tea. It’s like the Brits’ whole vibe. That, the Spice Girls, and stolen artefacts in museums. And Mali is British. As much as many people don’t want her to be, the fact remains she is. Even though she’s lived here her whole life (born in September—a Virgo, of course), the elderly gents at the pub she worked at for one summer would never believe it.

People will still ask the same old passive-aggressive question because she looks like she does. Gloriously dark skin, lips that have never been the same colour, and a different hair colour every week. (Once she went to school with her natural hair in braids, and the next day she wore a wig to her mid-back, and her teacher looked at her like she should be burnt at the stake.)

Still, Mali’s not sure what about that makes her not British, seeing as she had a group of girlfriends at school that looked relatively like her. They were all British too. She sounds about as posh as someone fromDownton Abbey, which she used to notlove, but the neck-breaking double-take she gets whenever she speaks to someone in passing does make her laugh.

Mali grew up with a vague sixth sense. She can determine if someone is looking at her because they think she’s hot or if they’re thinking about asking where she’s from. When she was in school, merely a five-foot-tall girl with hair she couldn’t quite control and a slightly chubby face, she used to answer the question with whatever she thought they thought the answer should be. Usually an easily recognisable country in Africa, because people who ask that question don’t know dark-skinned people can come from anywhere else. (Sometimes people think she’s Indian, but only if she has her hair straight.)

Now, because she’s older, wiser, and more hilarious, she’s prepared with answers. Sometimes people scoff, but she couldn’t care less if people think she’s rude. Not now she’s twenty-six. She still cares somewhat if the person she’s thinking about is her friend, or her family, or a waiter.

Yet, time and time again, she still gets asked the age-old question: “Where are you from?” Her answer ranges from “my mother’s vagina” to “down the road on the left; if you hit the corner shop, you’ve gone too far,” but no matter her reply, it never satisfies anyone. There’s always a “No, but where are youreallyfrom?” Mali’s sure that people, who have no business asking her anything personal anyway because she doesn’t know them, would stand until their knees gave out as she listed each generation in her family until her great-great-grandmother thrice removed, who was from Senegal. Then they’d throw their Werther’s Originals in the air and say, “See! We knew it!”

Mali sighs as she pours the mug of tea into her flask. (She would make it in the flask directly, but she never gets the ratio right and she’d rather a half full flask, than a weak tea). The sigh is fond, though, as she goes to press a kiss to Buffy’s head. He bumps her chin in return, and she thinks he’s thanking herfor letting him stay on the windowsill… or he’s pre-emptively pushing her away so she doesn’t make him move. Either way, she grabs her keys, briefcase, and flask with a smile. Mali used to think getting here took her too long. Now, she realises twenty-six is basically still a fetus. But she has her home, her family, her new job, and, most importantly, a flask of tea at exactly eight thirty-seven a.m.

She’s going to be right on time.

CHAPTER TWO

Zach shouldn’t have eatenthe porridge. He knew he’d overslept and didn’t have time to fully digest his meal before he’d have to run laps of the rugby field, but Coach Adebayo (Frankie to everyone but him) tells them to make sure they’ve eaten before they come to practice, and he always listens to Coach Adebayo, even if she schedules practice at the crack of dawn and hates his guts. Frankie’s the first black and first female rugby coach in the big leagues. It’s a big deal. She’s a big deal. He wants to support her (and he does by winning games and making her look as good as she is), but it’s hard because of the petty hatred she has for him, and Zach’s not a good enough person to rise above it.

It’s March, and Zach isn’t used to getting up in the dead of night (five a.m.) to go to hell (rugby training that he spent years fighting for). But now here he is, listening to the sound of the whistle blow every time his knees aren’t high enough as he all but skips across the field in a scarf and gloves. And it’s everything he thought it would be. Sort of. It could be better. It’shis fault that it isn’t, but it’s too early to unpack that right now, so he doesn’t.

Oversleeping isn’t something he’s used to. Zach has a schedule, and he sticks to it. His therapist (that he saw three times total and said “Nah, not for me, cheers”) said it stems from getting himself up and ready for school. Zach tried to get his older brother, Devon, up as well, but every day, Zach still walked to school alone. Zach was always there on time, with his perfect attendance and his one jam sandwich, because he wanted to be able to go to sixth form. He had great plans for university too. If he’d done that, he wouldn’t be freezing to death on a rugby pitch with a bunch of people who refuse to speak to him.

Zach always wanted to do something, be something. He had grand plans that included a family, a partner that loved him for him, and children, if he was lucky enough.

Recently, life decided it doesn’t give a shit what Zach wants. His landlord is three seconds away from throwing him out, which he should be glad about because his roommates are twats. Still, he hasn’t found anywhere else reasonably priced, close enough to work, and within walking distance from his mum. Lately, he’s been ignoring the first two issues. They don’t matter. He’ll live on noodles and drive an hour to work if need be. But he needs to be close to his mum. In an ideal world, he’d move her in with him, but he’s not in the premiership yet.

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